I. Issues on Problems:The Priority Development Assistance Fund scam, also called the PDAF scam or the pork barrel scam, is a political scandal involving the alleged misuse by several members of the Congress of the Philippines of their Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF, popularly called "pork barrel"), a lump-sum discretionary fund granted to each member of Congress for spending on priority development projects of the Philippine government, mostly on the local level. The scam was first exposed in the Philippine Daily Inquirer on July 12, 2013, with the six-part exposé of the Inquirer on the scam pointing to businesswoman Janet Lim-Napoles as the scam's mastermind after Benhur K. Luy, her second cousin and former personal assistant, was rescued by agents of the National Bureau of Investigation on March 22, 2013, four months after he was detained by Napoles at her unit at the Pacific Plaza Towers in Fort Bonifacio. Initially centering on Napoles' involvement in the 2004 Fertilizer Fund scam, the government investigation on Luy's testimony has since expanded to cover Napoles' involvement in a wider scam involving the misuse of PDAF funds from 2003 to 2013. It is estimated that the Philippine government was defrauded of some ₱10 billion in the course of the scam, having been diverted to Napoles, participating members of Congress and other government officials. Aside from the PDAF and the fertilizer fund maintained by the Department of Agriculture, around ₱900 million in royalties earned from the Malampaya gas field were also lost to the scam. The scam has provoked public outrage, with calls being made on the Internet for popular protests to demand the abolition of the PDAF, and the order for Napoles' arrest sparking serious discussion online. II. Text and Background:

Although the history of pork barrel-like discretionary funds in the Philippines dates back to 1922,[6] during the American colonial period, the PDAF in its current form was only established during the administration of Corazon Aquino with the creation of the Countryside Development Fund (CDF) in 1990. With ₱2.3 billion in initial funding, the CDF was designed to allow legislators to fund small-scale infrastructure or community projects which fell outside the scope of the national infrastructure program, which was often restricted to large infrastructure items. The CDF was later renamed the PDAF in 2000, during the administration of Joseph Estrada. Since 2008, every member of the House of Representatives usually receives an annual PDAF allocation of ₱70 million, while every senator receives an annual allocation of ₱200 million. The President also benefits from a PDAF-like allocation, the President's Social Fund (PSF), worth around ₱1 billion. Contrary to public belief, however, PDAF allocations are not actually released to members of Congress. Rather, disbursements under the PDAF are coursed via implementing agencies of the Philippine government, and are limited to "soft" and "hard" projects: the former largely referring to non-infrastructure projects (such as scholarships and financial assistance programs, although small infrastructure projects are also considered "soft" projects), and the latter referring to infrastructure projects which would be coursed via the Department of Public Works and Highways. Because presidential systems are often prone to political gridlock, the PDAF is often used as a means to generate majority legislative support for the programs of the executive. Furthermore, because PDAF allocations are released by the Department of Budget and Management (DBM), PDAF allocations are often dependent on the relationship a legislator has with the sitting President. For example, during the latter years of the Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo administration, she was more generous in allocating PDAF funds in the annual national budget in order to win the favor of legislators. PDAF allocation has gradually...

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...﻿Napoles has been alleged of having engineered a PHP 10 billion scam over the past decade by using the porkbarrel funds of 5 senators and 23 Congressmen for ghost projects. She was even tagged as the alleged mother of the PHP 10 billion porkbarrelscam.
Napoles' firm was allegedly tapped for government-funded projects that were later found questionable. The “so-called projects” include the PHP 728 million funds for a fertilizer project for poor farmers. It was alleged that the fund was diverted to benefit politicians and the former President. The Fertilizer fund scam is a political scandal that involved the officials of the Department of Agriculture (DA) and local and national government officials during the Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo administration. Agricultural funds which amount to PHP 728 million and PHP 1.1 billion released in 3 February 2004 and 11 February 2004 respectively were allegedly misused and utilized to finance Arroyo's campaign before the May 2004 Presidential Elections. Napoles was even summoned to a Senate blue ribbon committee hearing in 2008 to talk about the scam. However, no charges were officially filed against her.
Merlina Pablo Sunas, an employee of Napoles whom she had appointed as president of a bogus non-government organization called People's Organization for Progress and Development Foundation Inc. (POPDFI), currently stands as a...

...Porkbarrel started in the American era. In the book The Senate 1789-1989: Addresses on the History of the United States Senate, former US senator Robert Byrd wrote that the term “porkbarrel” refers to the national treasury from “which government officials dip for pork, or funds for local projects.”( Robert Byrd. The Senate 1789-1989: Addresses on the History of the United States Senate)
And also, defined by a Civil Society group in the Philippines, PDAF Watch, “porkbarrel funds are those allocated to politicians such as congresspersons and senators, to be used, based on their decision, to fund programs or projects in their districts”. Based on the research, the porkbarrel system in the Philippines was introduced by the Americans in 1922 and retained in the 1935 Constitution under the Commonwealth government. But in the era of Marcos regime, President Ferdinand Marcos abolished the porkbarrel and distributed the money instead to his cronies. Porkbarrel became famous and implementing effectively in the presidency of Corazon Aquino. In 1989, it was first intended for special project in Visayas and Mindanao. But in the year 1990, the porkbarrel of congressmen and senators was converted into lump sums or specified amounts, though as usual, influential...

...PorkBarrel
Do you agree to abolish the porkbarrel?
Before I proceed to that question, here are some information about porkbarrel.
Porkbarrel is the appropriation of government spending for localized projects secured solely or primarily to bring money to a representative's district. The usage originated in American English. In election campaigns, the term is used in derogatory fashion to attack opponents. Scholars, however, use it as a technical term regarding legislative control of local appropriations.
The term porkbarrel politics usually refers to spending which is intended to benefit constituents of a politician in return for their political support, either in the form of campaign contributions or votes. In the popular 1863 story "The Children of the Public", Edward Everett Hale used the term porkbarrel as a homely metaphor for any form of public spending to the citizenry.After the American Civil War, however, the term came to be used in a derogatory sense. The Oxford English Dictionary dates the modern sense of the term from 1873.By the 1870s, references to "pork" were common in Congress, and the term was further popularized by a 1919 article by Chester Collins Maxey in the National Municipal Review, which reported on certain legislative acts known to members of Congress...

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REACTIONPAPER
Submitted by:
Cortez, Diana C.
BSN-III NICOLET
“THIS IS MY COUNTRY”
I am an average teenager, but I am aware of what is happening in the country. One of the big problem that our country encounters today is CORRUPTION. “PorkBarrel” is the appropriation of government spending for localized projects secured solely or primarily to bring money to a representative's district. The usage originated in American English. In election campaigns, the term is used in derogatory fashion to attack opponents.
The corruption in our country is passed by generation to generation. If we don’t act now as an living individual the next generation would still suffer, just think our children’s future if we don’t speak out or act out now. Yes, we do pay taxes but whenever you see the road trails and the situation of the poverty? Would you be happy? Is it worth seeing?. As we respond to the call of the times, we can say that we are all heroes. We are a nation of heroes: resilient and staunch in the face of adversity, ready to fight against the evil that is the porkbarrel system. We are not only commemorating our fallen heroes – we are all heroes in our own right, in our own little way.
The real cause behind corruption is absence of a "respectable justice system". Philippine justice is not credible, and most of the Filipino people are losing respect for it, because it cannot...

...PORKBARREL
is the appropriation of government spending for localized projects secured solely or primarily to bring money to a representative's district. The usage originated in American English.In election campaigns, the term is used in derogatory fashion to attack opponents. Scholars, however, use it as a technical term regarding legislative control of local appropriations.
HISTORY
The term porkbarrel politics usually refers to spending which is intended to benefit constituents of a politician in return for their political support, either in the form of campaign contributions or votes. In the popular 1863 story "The Children of the Public", Edward Everett Hale used the term porkbarrel as a homely metaphor for any form of public spending to the citizenry.[4] After the American Civil War, however, the term came to be used in a derogatory sense. The Oxford English Dictionary dates the modern sense of the term from 1873.[5] By the 1870s, references to "pork" were common in Congress, and the term was further popularized by a 1919 article by Chester Collins Maxey in the National Municipal Review, which reported on certain legislative acts known to members of Congress as "porkbarrel bills". He claimed that the phrase originated in a pre-Civil War practice of giving slaves a barrel of salt pork as a reward and...

...Since the existence of the American government, pork activities have been ingrained
in thehelped politicians build reputation by spending taxpayer money. But are these done in
the interest of the people or rather as a strategic move for incumbents. Moreover, is the
budget for these well spent? If looking at this from a congressperson's point of view, you
would probably say yes during a news conference or when you snap the scissors at a ribbon
cutting ceremony, but really, all you did was contact a few people that put your name on the
project while they do all the work and taxpayers pay for it. As Starobin puts it, "one man's
boondoggle is another man's civic pride." According to John Ellwood and Eric Patashnik's "In
Praise of Pork," porkbarrel is now observed by many as a symbol of out­of control Congress.
It is also seen as the leading cause of budget deficit, having spent $93 billion in 1992 alone.
And porkbarrels are not expected to disappear according to Paul Starobin's Pork: A
Time­Honored Tradition Lives On. On this same essay, Starobin expresses how he thinks,
and how many people think, that porkbarrel is wasteful to the budget we have. With nearly
$18 trillion dollars of debt, the US is not looking good when it comes to projects such as ...

...﻿Porkbarrel scandal
tHE SHOCKING P10 BILLION PORKBARREL SCANDAL HAS OCCUPIED THE PUBLIC ATTENTION IN THE PAST TWO MONTHS SINCE IT FIRST EXPLODED IN MID-jULY. tHE NEWS HAD BEEN COVERED IN BOTH PRINT AND BROADCAST MEDIA, AS WELL AS IN SOCIAL MEDIA VIA THE INTERNET. iT IS INTERESTING TO LOOK BACK AT WHAT HAVE HAPPENED IN THE PAST AND RELATE THEM WITH THE PRESENT AS THE EVENTS UNFOLD. lET US USE tHE mILLION pEOPLE mARCH HELD AT THE lUNETA(rIZAL pARK) HELD ON AUG. 26, 2013 AS A REFERENCE DATE. tHE PROTEST RALLY WAS TIMED ON A NATIONAL HOLIDAY, aRAW NG bAYANI (nATIONAL hEROES dAY ), CALLING FOR THE ABOLITION OF THE PORKBARREL OR THE PRIORITY DEVELOPMENT ASSISTANT FUND (pdaf). iT WAS ATTENDED BY OVER 150,000 PEOPLE AND THE anc CABLE t.v STATION ESTIMATED THE CROWD TO HAVE REACH 400,000 PROTESTOR.
Exactly a week before the Million People March on Aug. 19,2013, President Benigno Aquino 3rd rebuffed mounting calls for the abolition of the PDAF from church leader and civil society groups who were outraged by the scale of the misuse and abuse of PDAF over the years . it was the first time that president Aquino addressed the porkbarrel issue where the legislators pocketed the public funds intended for the target beneficiaries . he declared: “as in everything else, there are good uses and bad uses.’’
P-NOY said that “perhaps the right thing to do is to apply the...

...Even from the way the porkbarrel system originated in the Philippines, it is easy to see that its path will not be a smooth sailing one. The porkbarrel system originated in 1916, when Americans used the funds to divide and rule the Philippine Assembly. The Americans used it to appease the Filipinos who wanted the country’s independence. Even from the start, it has been a way of buying off people’s support. During Martial Law, former President Ferdinand Marcos abolished the porkbarrel system in the country, but he did not keep the money as part of the national budget. Instead, he distributed the porkbarrel funds to his supporters. Now, the country is facing yet again another problem in the misuse of the pork funds, with the P 10 billion porkbarrelscam noted as the mother of all scams and the people’s protests necessitating the need for immediate reforms to be made.
Due to the existing anomalies and lack of transparency found in the porkbarrel system, it would be best if the PDAF (Priority Development Assistance Fund) were to be abolished. There are too many inconsistencies and loopholes in the system that are currently providing corrupt politicians multiple avenues for misusing the funds. One of the biggest flaws with the current system is that the...